Bioterrorism threats have received a great deal of attention at present because of the ease of use of many of these deadly agents as well as accessibility of a largely unprotected populace. There can be significant economic and political ramifications that follow a bioterrorism attack, as was seen in the attacks with anthrax-laden envelopes in Washington, D.C. and New York in 2001 that resulted in disruption of postal service and 18 deaths. Due to the threat from such agents, the Centers for Disease Control established a list of biological agents that can be “weaponized” and have the potential to cause large scale morbidity and mortality. These select agents have been classified into three groups (A, B, and C) based on their potential for wide dissemination in civilian populations. Category B agents are considered to be moderately easy to disseminate and would, if distributed into civilian populations, result in moderate morbidity and mortality. Among the list of Category B agents is the Staphylococcal enterotoxin B (SEB) produced by the microorganism Staphylococcus aureus (Mantis, N.J. (2005) Adv. Drug Del. Rev. 57:1424-39). SEB has the potential to cause disease in humans at relatively low doses, in particular when the route of administration occurs by a mucosal surface. Typical routes of administration for SEB are by inhalation as an aerosol or by ingestion of SEB-laden food or water.
There are at least seven antigenically distinct enterotoxins secreted by strains of S. aureus (Kotb (1998) Curr. Opin. Microbiol. 1:56-65; Bergdoll (1983) Enterotoxins, in: C. S. F. Easmon, C. Adlam (Eds.), Staphylococcus and Staphylococcal Infections, Academic Press, New York, N.Y., pp. 559-598). SEB is a single polypeptide of approximately 28,000 Da molecular mass, and is comprised of two tightly packed domains: a large domain and a small domain (Swaminathan et al. (1992) Nature 359:801-6). Due to the compact tertiary structure of SEB, it is highly resistant to degradation by proteases, including trypsin, chymotrypsin, and papain. It is likely that protease resistance contributes to SEB stability in the intestinal lumen (Mantis (2005)).
Infection of a host organism by pathogenic bacteria such as staphylococci is aided by the production of exotoxins. The SEB produced by S. aureus is a protein that is classified as a superantigen (SAg). Superantigens are defined as toxins that can activate T cells by forming a bridge between a MHC II on antigen presenting cells (APCs) and the T cell receptors (TCR) on specific subsets of CD4+ and CD8+ T cells. SEB recognizes one of the seven classes of human Vβ+ T cell receptors: Vβ3, 12, 13.2, 14, 15, 17, 20 (Jardetzky et al. (1994) Nature 368:711-8; Leder et al. (1998) J. Exp. Med. 187:823-33; Li et al. (1998) Immunity 9:807-16). As a consequence of SEB binding, T cells release massive quantities of cytokines including IL-2, TNF-β, and interferon-γ, and undergo hyper-proliferation that ultimately results in their depletion (Kappler et al. (1989) Science 244:811-3). MHC II+ APCs respond by producing TNF-α and IL-1 (Krakauer (2003) Methods Mol. Biol. 214:137-49). Two regions of SEB are involved in the interaction with MHC II, including a hydrophobic pocket near L45 and a polar pocket that includes residues Y89, Y115, and E67 (Mantis (2005); Jardetzky et al. (1994); Olson et al, (1997) J. Mol. Recognit. 10:277-89; and, Seth et al. (1994) Nature 369:324-7). It is predicted that obtaining a greater understanding of the molecular interactions between SEB and TCR-MHC II will lead to the development of attenuated SEB vaccine candidates; this prediction has been realized to some extent (Ulrich et al. (1998) Vaccine 16:1857-64).
SEB is a fairly stable protein, although it can be denatured by prolonged boiling. Because it is stable as an aerosol, it is considered a likely candidate for use as a bioterrorist agent. It is an incapacitating toxin, with an LD50 (the dose lethal to 50% of the population) by inhalation of 27 μg/kg, and an ID50 (the dose infectious to 50% of the population) of only 0.0004 μg/kg. SEB most commonly enters the body by either ingestion or inhalation, thereby leading to two different clinical presentations of SEB food poisoning and SEB respiratory syndrome. On the battlefield it is unlikely that SEB will be ingested, but both routes are possible in a terrorist attack. SEB as a terrorist weapon of mass destruction would most likely be disseminated as an aerosol. (Madsen (2001) Clinics in Laboratory Medicine 21:593-605).
SEB food poisoning is characterized by severe abdominal cramps and usually non-bloody diarrhea, sometimes accompanied by a headache and fever. Symptoms begin suddenly, usually within 2 to 8 hours after ingestion and usually abate in 12 hours or less. Inhalation of aerosolized preformed toxin produces SEB respiratory syndrome, which is characterized by fever, headache, chills, myalagias, nonproductive cough, dyspnea, and retrosternal chest pain. Inadvertent swallowing of the toxin leads to nausea and vomiting, and eye contact may induce conjunctival injection. Fever of 39° C. to 41° C. may last up to 5 days, and cough may persist up to 4 weeks. The mechanism of death in fatal inhalation cases is pulmonary edema (Madsen 2001).
Several potential strategies are under development for the treatment of SEB-infected individuals, although no effective treatment currently exists. The use of intravenous immunoglobulins has been an approach that has met with limited success (Darrenberg et al. (2004) Clin. Infect. Dis. 38:836-42). Another approach under development has recently been reported in a mouse SEB model system (Krakauer et al. (2006) Antimicrob. Agents Chemother. 50:391-5). In mouse SEB model system, mice were exposed to SEB and treated with the anti-inflammatory drug dexamethasone. In an LPS-potentiated model of SEB, toxic shock can be halted if the drug is administered to the mice quickly following SEB treatment (short treatment window). As a practical matter, however, it would be difficult to correctly diagnose exposure to SEB and administer sufficient dexamethasone to quell the SEB-mediated diseases within such a short treatment window.
SEB vaccine research has been primarily carried out by the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID). The vaccine development has focused on the use of formalin-inactivated toxin (Tseng et al. (1995) Infect. Immun 63:2880-5). The toxoid vaccine is typically made by prolonged incubation in formalin at pH 7.5. Although the SEB toxoid vaccine was immunogenic and patients did develop an immune reaction to SEB, this vaccine was largely abandoned by USAMRIID in recent years and supplanted by recombinant, site-directed attenuated mutants (Stiles et al. (2001) Infect. Immun. 69:2031-6). Unfortunately, these mutants may not be suitable for use in humans due to retention of emetic activity in primate studies (Harris et al. (1993) Infect. Immun. 61:3175-83).
The SEB work reviewed above suggests that effective methods for combating a terrorist's use of SEB are currently lacking. Therefore, an approach to develop a drug that can neutralize the activity of SEB in vivo would be a valuable human therapeutic for the treatment and prevention of SEB-mediated disease.